A History of the Christian Church II

 "The world into which Christianity came owed much to the specific influence of Greek thought."

Certain factors in the world of thought into which Christianity came belong to Universal ancient Religion and are of hoary antiquity. 

All men except a few representatives of philosophical sophistication believed in the existence of a power or of powers invisible, super human and eternal controlling human destiny and to be worshiped or placated by prayer, ritual or. Sacrifice. The earth was viewed as the centre of the universe. Around it, the sun planets and stars ran their courses. Above it was the heaven; below, the abode of departed spirits or of the wicked. No conception of what is now called natural law had penetrated the popular mind. All the on-goings of nature were the work of invisible powers of good and evil who ruled arbitrarily. Miracles were therefore to be regarded not merely as possible they were to be expected whenever the higher forces would impress men with the important or the unusual. The world was the abode of innumerable spirits, righteous or malevolent who touched human life in all its phases and who even entered into such possession of men as to control their actions for good or ill. A profound sense of unworthiness, of ill desert and dissatisfaction with the existing conditions of life characterized the mass of mankind. The varied forms of religious manifestation were evidences of the universal need for better relations with the spiritual and the unseen, and of men’s longing for help greater than what they could give one another.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY, SOCRATES

Besides these general conceptions common to popular religions, the world into which Christianity came owed much to the specific influence of Greek thought. Hellenistic ideas dominated the intelligence of the Roman Empire, but their sway was extensive only among the more civilized portion of the population. Greek Philosophic speculations at first concerned itself with the explanation of the physical universe. Yet with Heraclitus of Ephesus (about BC 490), though all was viewed as in a sense physical the universe which is in constant flow is regarded as fashioned by a fiery element the all-penetrating reasons of which men’s souls are a part. Here was probably the germ of the logos (…..) conception which was to play such a role in later Greek speculation and Christian Theology. As yet, this shaping element was undistinguished from material warmth or fire. Anaxagoras of Athens (about BC 500-428) taught that a shaping mind (….) acted in the ordering of matter and is independent of it. The Pythagoreans of Southern Italy held that spirit is immaterial and that souls are fallen spirits imprisoned in material bodies. To this belief in immaterial existence they seem to have been led by a consideration of the properties of numbers-permanent truths beyond the realm of matter and not materially discerned.

To Socrates (B.C. 470?-399), the explanation of man himself, not of the universe was the prime object of thought. Man’s conduct; that is morals, was the most important theme of investigation. Right action is based on knowledge and would result in the four virtues-prudence, courage, self control and justice which as “the natural virtues” were to have their eminent place in medieval Christian theology. This identification of virtue with knowledge, the doctrine that to know will involve doing was indeed a disastrous legacy to all Greek thinking and influential in much Christian speculation notably in the Gnosticism of the second century.

In Socrates’ Disciple, Plato-(BC 427-347), the early Greek mind reached its highest spiritual attainment. He is properly described as a man of mystical piety as well as of the profoundest spiritual insight. To Plato, the passing forms of this visible world give no real knowledge. That knowledge of the truly permanent and real comes from our acquaintance with the “ideas” those changeless archetypal universal patterns which exist in the invisible spiritual world- the intelligible world since known by reason rather than by the senses-and gives whatever of reality is shared by the passing phenomena present to our senses. The soul knew these ideas in previous existence.

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HAVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

From the Bequest of

JOHN HARVEY TREAT

OF LAWRENCH MASS, CLASS OF 1863

A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY WILLISON WALKER

TITUS STREET Professor of Ecclesiastical History

in Yale University.

New York

Charles Scribner’s Sons

1921

Copyright, 1918, By

Charles Scribner’s Sons

Published March, 1918

Reprinted May, 1919.

PREFATORY NOTE

In this history, the writer has endeavoured to treat the vast field of the story of the church so as to make evident, as far as he is able, the circumstances of its origin, its early development, the changes which lead to the Reformation, as well as the course of that tremendous upheaval. And those influences which have resulted in the present situation and tendencies of the life of the church. As far as space would permit, he has directed attention to the growth of the doctrine and the modification of Christian thought.

He is under obligation to many who have labored in this field before him, but he would express special indebtedness to Professor Friedrich Loofs, of Halle, whose Leitfaden Zum stadium der dogmengeschichts has been especially helpful in the treatment of Christian thought and to professor Gustav Gruger, of Giessen, and his associates whose handbuch der Kirchengeschichts is a mine of recent bibliographical information.

WILLISTON WALKER

New Haven, March, 1918

PERIODE ONE: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE GNOSTIC CRISIS.

Section 1:

 The General Situation:

The birth of Christ saw the lands which surrounded the Mediterranean in the possession of Rome. To a degree never before equalled, and unapproached in modern times, these vast territories which embraced all that common men knew of civilized life, were under the sway of a single type of culture. The civilisation of India or of China did not come within the vision of the ordinary inhabitant of the Roman Empire. Outside his borders he knew only savage or semicivilised tribes. The Roman Empire and the world of civilized men were co-extensive. All was held together by allegiance to a single emperor, and by a common military system subject to him. The Roman army small in comparison with that of a modern military state, was adequate to preserve the Roman peace. Under that peace, commerce flourished, communication was made easy by excellent roads and by sea, and among educated men at least in the larger towns, a common language that of Greece facilitated the interchange of thought. It was an empire that despite of many evil rulers and corrupt lower officials secured a rough justice such as the world had never before seen; and its citizens were proud of it and of its achievements.

Yet with all its unity of imperial authority and military control, Rome was far from crushing local institutions. In domestic matters, the inhabitants of the provinces were largely self governing. Their local religious observances were generally respected. Among the masses, the ancient languages and customs persisted. Even native rulers were allowed a limited sway in portions of the empire, as native states still persist under British rule in India. Such a land was Palestine at the time of Christ’s birth. Not a little of the success of Rome as a mistress of its diverse subject population was due to this considerate treatment of local rights and prejudices.

2: The General Religious Background:

The diversity in the empire was scarcely less remarkable than its unity. This diversity was nowhere more apparent than in the realm of religious thought. Christianity entered no empty world. Its advent found men’s minds filled with conceptions of the universe, of religion, of sin and of rewards and punishments, with which it had to reckon and to which it had to adjust itself. Christianity could not build on virgin soil. The conceptions which it found already existing formed much of the material with which it must erect its structures. Many of these ideas are no longer those of the modern world. The fact of this inevitable inter-mixture compels the student to distinguish the permanent from the transitory in Christian thought though the process is one of exceeding difficulty, and the solutions given by different scholars are diverse.....To be continued

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